The premier index to journal articles, book reviews, and essays in the fields of religion, theology, biblical studies. Produced by the American Theological Library Association.
Use the following criteria to decide if a publication is popular or scholarly.
|
Scholarly Articles |
Popular Articles |
|
| Author | Expert in the field, credentials and affilated university listed | Journalist, freelance writer or staff writers |
| Length of article | Longer more detailed content | Shorter articles giving a brief overview |
| Intended audience | Researchers, experts in the field | General Public |
| Layout | Includes an abstract, footnotes, list of citations. | Does not follow a standard format, often a simple title |
| Images | Charts, graphs, tables of data | Colorful, eye catching photos |
| Vocabulary | Specialized terminology, need extensive knowlege of discipline to understand text | Written at the level to be understood by the general public |
If an article is not available as a PDF, you will see the Get a Copy button instead. Click on it to find out if the PDF is available from another library database, or to request it from interlibrary loan.
ATLA Religion Database:
While searching for children's/youth ministry in the database will bring up results, the actual subject heading for articles in this area is "church work with youth." Use this in a subject search to pull up the best and most complete list of results!
PsycInfo, ERIC, and Sociological Abstracts:
Use Truncation
Adolescent, Adolescents, Adolecence
Teen, Teens, Teenage, Teenagers
How do you search library databases for all those variations? By using truncation! By placing a truncation symbol at the end of a root word, you can search a database for all the variations of that word.
Many databases use an asterisk for the truncation symbol.
Example:
adolescen* --- retrieves adolescent, adolescents, or adolescence
teen* -- retreives teen, teens, teenage, teenagers
